


This Mirrored Perspective

by magdarko



Category: NCIS
Genre: M/M, Stalking, Surprises, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-14
Updated: 2012-02-14
Packaged: 2018-01-26 00:36:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1668284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magdarko/pseuds/magdarko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony comes home on Valentine's Day to something... unexpected. Minor spoilers for 9x11: Newborn King.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Mirrored Perspective

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for [valentine_tibbs](valentine-tibbs.livejournal.com). I determined not to go the schmoopy route, and ended up with this. Please take note of the tags and be kind to yourself! Okay, that makes it sound more dark than it is, but it may be triggery for some.

 “Stairs,” Tony mutters irritably, hauling himself up the last three. His right knee twinges in fervent agreement. Bah.

He turns down the hallway, past 403 and past that stupid buzzing light with the faulty wiring that Carl won’t get off his ass and fix, like he won’t get of his ass and fix the elevator. He stops at the door to 405, scrabbles for his keys and wishes he could just fall through it,. _Shower_ , he thinks dreamily as he turns the key in lock number one. _Food. Beer._ Lock number two. _Maybe some Bogie._ Lock number three.

He turns the handle and does his usual half-pivot near the door, dropping his bag as he closes the door and then putting up the chain and throwing the bolt. Then he turns—and freezes.

What. The. Fuck.

Tony’s gun is out and in his hands before he really thinks about it. Heart pounding, he sweeps the room with his eyes and his weapon, but there’s no one there. He moves all the way into his apartment, part of his mind going over the locks he unlocked to get inside and then locked again behind him. The rest of his attention, the larger part, is occupied with the scene before him. 

Tony’s couch and coffee table have been moved from their spot in the middle of the room to the far wall, presumably to make space for… a picnic? There’s a picnic cloth in the middle of the room, on which sit a wicker basket, a beer cooler, and two place settings complete with gleaming silverware.

And none of it had been there this morning.

He moves forward, edging silently around his rearranged furniture. He slows down when he gets to his relocated couch, stepping sideways until he can see behind it. Nothing. He uses the reflection of the room in the dark screen of his TV to check the far side of the bookcase. Nothing. He continues the slow, silent circuit around the room till it takes him to the kitchen door.

He leans against the wall by the kitchen door for a moment, draws in a deep breath, and then swings into the doorway, weapon drawn and ready; he reaches out with one hand for the light switch, and flicks it on.

It’s empty.

Tony’s kitchen does not lend itself to concealment, but he makes himself check each of the cabinets, and behind the door. Nothing.

He proceeds silently out of the kitchen and down the corridor to the bedroom, keeping his breathing slow and soft and his footsteps light, knowing that he’s made enough noise checking the kitchen that there’s not much point being silent anymore. Still.

He turns the handle and opens the door, thanking god it’s never creaked, and slips into the bedroom. He stands absolutely still a moment, holding his breath and straining to hear the sound of someone else’s. The only sound is the faint noise of Mrs Carlyle’s TV next door. Finally he steps sideways to the light switch and throws it.

The room looks mostly undisturbed. There’s the comforter where he threw it half on the floor in his hurry to get out of bed; there’s the magazine he knocked off the nightstand when he was grabbing his badge during his mad dash to the door; there are yesterday’s socks still lying where he dropped them. He’d been braced for American Beauty-style rose petals or god knows what else, but it looks pretty much the way it did when he left home at four in the morning.

Tony moves quickly to the closet and checks that too, pushing suits aside and almost stepping on his Bruno Magli wingtips. He looks under the bed and behind the curtains, feeling like he’s playing some bizarre game of hide-and-seek—it turns out that clearing his own fucking apartment is nothing like clearing a crime scene.

The bedroom turns out to be empty, though, so that leaves only the bathroom. He walks swiftly to the door, not caring any more about being quiet, and throws it open. He flips on the light, not really surprised that it blinks on to reveal his bathroom and nothing else. The shower stall is empty and his washcloth is still draped over the tap, dried into an upside-down flower.

The bar soap is wet and the lone hand-towel is damp in the middle.

Well, at least he knows the apartment is empty.

Tony makes his way back to the living room on shaky legs, holstering his gun as he goes. He double-checks the locks on the door, despite the fact that they clearly didn’t stop whoever it was from breaking into his apartment.

Fuck.

He swallows against the sudden rise of nausea. God, he’s such an idiot. He should have—he should have taken it seriously, asked some questions, talked to someone…

He wipes his clammy hands on his trousers before pulling out his phone. Gibbs answers on the second ring. “Yeah, it’s Gibbs,” he says, and Tony feels some of the shakiness settle at the sound of his voice, gruff and a little irritated and wonderfully familiar.

“Hey, Boss,” he says, trying to sound light and cheerful and ending up sounding shrill and panicky. He swallows hard and clears his throat before speaking again. “You busy?”

“What’s going on, DiNozzo?” Gibbs demands impatiently; Tony can almost see the accompanying laser-stare.

He gives a jerky laugh. “Think it’s best you see this for yourself, Boss.” He turns away from the door as he speaks, and the whole fucked-up scene hits him in the gut again, and he has to suddenly fight the urge to scream. Someone came into his—they moved his _couch_ and his _coffee table_ , they—

He slams down hard on the scream that’s fighting to tear out of his throat and forces himself to pay attention to Gibbs.

“DiNozzo! Where the hell are you?”

“My place,” Tony says, pressing himself back against his door in some stupid attempt to assure himself that it’s still closed and locked behind him.

“Your… place.” Gibbs is frowning: Tony can hear it in his voice, and something else, something oddly guarded.

“Yeah,” he says slowly. He licks his dry lips. “Can you… can you come over?”

There’s a pause, and then Gibbs says, “Gimme twenty minutes.” Tony, for the millionth time, thanks Gibbs’ Marine training—the man knows when to stop asking questions and do what he’s told.

Gibbs hangs up without another word. It’s probably very fucked up that Tony finds the abrupt dismissal comforting.

He stays where he is for a moment, leaning back against the door, before hauling himself upright. _Come on, Very Special Agent DiNozzo; stop acting like some damsel in distress._

He makes his way back to the ‘picnic’ and squats down gingerly next to the red-and-white checkered picnic cloth. The plates, knives and forks on the cloth aren’t familiar. _Well, at least they didn’t rifle through my kitchen cabinets. That was polite of them._ When he bends down to take a closer look at the silverware, he feels a surge of triumph—the light glinting off the handles clearly illuminates the fingerprints on them.

_Gotcha, you bastard._

He straightens up, crossing over to his desk to grab a pen before making his way back to the picnic, where he uses the pen to lift the cloth over the picnic basket. He’s half-expecting body parts or explosive devices, so it’s sort of an anti-climax to find microwave boxes and fruit.

Tony lets the cloth fall over the basket again, and sighs before he moves over to the beer cooler. It takes a little ingenuity to open the thing without getting his prints all over it, but he manages it, and flips back the lid.

What he sees makes him swallow hard against another wave of nausea.

_It’s a coincidence._

_Right, and I believe in coincidences about as much as Gibbs does. It would be one hell of a coincidence for someone to break into my apartment and just happen to have my favourite microbrew on hand._

He’s so keyed up that the sound of the doorbell actually makes him jump, and he shoots to his feet, weapon raised. For a moment he just stands there, gun pointed at the door, mouth dry.

_For God’s sake, DiNozzo! You’re a federal agent! Pull it the fuck together!_

He’s just taken a step towards the door when his visitor pounds on it hard, twice, and he relaxes.

“Coming, Boss!” He holsters his gun and walks around the picnic cloth to the door. His hands are still shaking a little when he takes down the chain and does the familiar dance of latch-bolt-locks-door handle, but he manages to swing the door open with a creditable “Hey, Gibbs!”

Gibbs is wearing his usual USMC hoodie and a scowl. “What the hell was so damned important, DiNozzo?”

Tony, about to step aside and wave Gibbs in, pauses at the odd inflection of Gibbs’ voice. Flat. Like he already knew the answer.

 _Would_ Gibbs _? No. No way._

Gibbs is already pushing past him into the apartment, looking intently at Tony the whole time, close and watchful and…

Expectant.

 _No way,_ Tony thinks numbly.

He closes the door behind Gibbs and turns to watch him. He can’t even begin to imagine how Gibbs—stoic, hard-assed, practical Gibbs—would do something like this, but…

Then Gibbs sees the picnic, and stops short. Tony, looking at his face, thinks, _Okay, maybe not Gibbs._

Gibbs is staring at the picnic spread out on Tony’s living room floor. For a long moment he just looks at it, the initial shock replaced by a look so blank and still that it makes Tony nervous all over again.

Then, very slowly, he says, “What’s the occasion, DiNozzo?”

Tony laughs, the sound high and brittle in his ears, and says, “I’m gonna go out on a limb and say it’s probably Valentine’s Day.”

Gibbs doesn’t look at him. He’s still wearing that blank, closed look. “Didn’t think you went in for that kind of thing,” he says, still slow, eyes carefully fixed on the set-up on the floor.

Tony feels something like a sob welling up. “Well, Boss, I guess someone out there doesn’t know me as well as you do.” He manages an expression that hopefully approximates a smile.

At that, Gibbs turns to him, startled, and says, quick and sharp, “This wasn’t you?”

“No!” Tony bursts out. “God,  no! Why would I—” he cuts himself off, takes a deep breath, and tries again. “I got home and it was like this.” He scrubs his hands over his face. “I have no idea how it got here… that stuff—that stuff’s not even mine.”

Gibbs looks from Tony to the picnic; if Tony didn’t know better he’d have said Gibbs looks… stunned. He looks, in fact, more stunned than he had when he’d first seen the living room.

“Hell, DiNozzo,” he says finally. He turns around and fixes Tony with a glare, a familiar look of determination settling over his face. “You have any idea who this could be? Who has a key to your place?”

Tony sighs. “Just you, Boss,” he says, suddenly exhausted. He slumps back against the door, screwing his eyes shut for a moment and then opening them again.

He and Gibbs look at each other in silence for a moment.

Finally Gibbs nods. “Okay,” he says quietly. “Let’s look at the locks. Move, DiNozzo.”

Tony hauls himself off the door and opens it. Gibbs crouches down to examine the lower locks while Tony peers at the one above, balancing awkwardly on his toes to avoid draping himself over Gibbs.

“Scratches down here,” Gibbs says, straightening up abruptly and making Tony scramble backwards.

“Yeah,” Tony says. “Here too.”

Gibbs nods, closing the door again and sliding the bolt home. He strides past Tony into the living room and over to the picnic set-up, and crouches down by the picnic basket (Tony winces in sympathy when his knee pops). “You look in here yet?”

“Yeah,” Tony says, following him and handing him a pen so Gibbs can lift the cloth and see for himself. He stops next to Gibbs, staring down at the basket without really seeing it. “Looks like food in there, Boss. Microwave boxes and fruit.”

Gibbs grunts and nods at the cooler. “Beer?”

Tony swallows. “Yeah. That, uh, that microbrew I like.”

Gibbs looks up sharply and searches Ton’s face. His jaw works. “Okay,” he says, voice tight. “What else? Plates look familiar?”

Tony blinks. He hadn’t really thought about it beyond recognising that they’re not his. “No,” he says slowly, “but Boss—there’s prints on the silverware.”

The look of grim satisfaction on Gibbs’ face echoes the feeling Tony’d had when he found the prints.

Gibbs gets to his feet and grabs Tony by the arm, hauling him past the picnic cloth and over to the displaced couch. He pushes Tony down onto it, sits next to him, and fixes him with a glare. “Okay, DiNozzo. Talk to me.”

“Talk?” Tony repeats, in only partly-feigned confusion.

Gibbs gives him an impatient look. “Yeah, DiNozzo. _Talk to me._ ”

“Oh!” Tony belatedly gets it. He sighs, scrubs a hand over his face. “Okay. I’m not seeing anyone, my last relationship was—” he squints. “That would be—that would be EJ, Boss.”

He braces for Gibbs’ reaction to hearing her name, but Gibbs just grunts. “It’s not her.”

“No,” Tony agrees. “Anyway, EJ never had a key either.” He falls silent for a while.

Gibbs clears his throat. “Wendy?”

Tony looks up, startled. “ _Wendy?_ This—this really isn’t her style, Gibbs.” He stops. “At least it wasn’t ten years ago.” He sighs. “And anyway, she doesn’t have my address—if she did she wouldn’t have sent that Christmas card to work.” He looks down and away. “And she… she wouldn’t do this, Boss.”

He’s expecting Gibbs to say something about assumptions, but Gibbs just says, “Didn’t think so.” He leans forward, fixing his gaze on the beer cooler on the floor. “Any other ideas?”

Tell him, Tony thinks furiously to himself. But fuck, Gibbs is going to think he’s such an idiot.

“There’s… something else,” he forces himself to say at last. Gibbs waits in silence while Tony chokes over his next words. When seconds pass by and Tony doesn’t go on, however, Gibbs snaps, “You going to make me guess, DiNozzo?”

Tony drops his face into his hands for a moment, and then finally looks up. “I…think I’d better show you, Boss.” He shuffles to his feet and makes his way to the bedroom, retrieving everything from the drawer he’s been dumping it all in, and goes back to the living room, and Gibbs, with his hands full of it.

Gibbs eyes the stuff with obvious disdain. “This was here too?”

“Uh. No.”Tony lowers himself onto the couch and drops everything in his lap. “This—” he lifts a DVD—“this was in my letter box last week. This—” he taps the book— “this was delivered here when we were in Boston.” He stops, licks his lips. “The other DVD was… sometime in January. Fifteenth or sixteenth, I don’t remember. And there were flowers.”

“Flowers.” Gibbs repeats, withering. Tony lets himself grin a little.

“Yeah. Uh… three times. Once in the first week of January, once just after the first DVD, and once the week before last.”

“Those the ones that came to work?”

Tony looks up. He and Gibbs stare at each other. Tony wonders what Gibbs is thinking; Tony himself is remembering Gibbs’ face that day, when he’d come in and seen the flowers on Tony’s desk. “Yeah,” Tony says at last. “On the third.”

“Card?”

“Only the first one. It said ‘brighten my day with a smile’.”

Gibbs snorts, and Tony can’t help the chuckle that escapes him in response.

“And the postcard?”

Tony looks at it. It’s a nice card, with the Washington Monument and the Reflecting Pool at sunset. He picks it up, flips it over and sighs.

_Thinking of you! <3_

Gibbs plucks the postcard out of his hands and turns it over. Tony watches him out of the corner of his eye. Gibbs is glaring at it like it’s personally offended him, like he’d like to tear it up, stomp on the pieces and then set fire to them. Tony smiles, a small pleased smile that Gibbs ignores like he’s been doing since Christmas. Like he’d ignored it when Tony’d got those flowers and he’d glared at them, too.

Finally Gibbs hands the postcard back to Tony. “Anything else?”

Tony shakes his head, slumping back against the couch. “This isn’t enough?” he asks bleakly.

Gibbs chuffs out a laugh and leans back as well. “So you’ve been getting ‘em since January. Think it’s the same person?”

Tony shrugs helplessly. “What are the odds that I have _two_ stalkers?” he demands, aware that the high, shrill note is in his voice again.

Gibbs gives that infuriating half-smile. “With you? Pretty good, DiNozzo.” The smile fades. “But you’re probably right—it looks like the same person.”

“Yeah.” Tony stares glumly at the spread on the floor. All the way home he’d been thinking about kicking back with a beer and a movie, and now the thought of beer makes his stomach twist.

Someone was here, in his apartment, in his space, moving his furniture, using his soap…

He’s snapped out of his thoughts by Gibbs clearing his throat. “Now what, DiNozzo?”

“Now what?” Tony repeats stupidly, still stuck on the fact that they’re sitting on a couch that someone else _touched_ and _moved_ and—

“Yeah, Tony. Now what. What do you wanna do?”

Tony shakes his head, looking down at the stuff in his hands. Suddenly he can’t stand the thought of touching any of it for a second longer, and he shoves it all onto the couch before leaning forward and burying his face in his hands.

“I don’t know,” he admits, muffled.

“DiNozzo.” A very brief, very light head-slap, but it’s enough to get Tony to sit up and try to get it together. He gives Gibbs a wry look.

“I, uh, I should probably try to figure out who it is.”

Gibbs just looks at him. The unspoken _ya think, DiNozzo?_ hangs in the air between them.

Tony looks back at the picnic and rubs the back of his neck, rolling his shoulders and feeling the pull of tight, sore muscles. Fuck, he’s so _tired._

“We should probably run the prints off the silverware,” he says, because that’s the obvious starting point.

Gibbs nods. “Do it. Figure out who bought that beer. And figure out who you met in January.”

Tony grimaces. “Gibbs, I have no idea. I rang in the new year at a party with _Abby._ I must have talked to twenty people just that day.”

“Get a list.”

Tony groans. “I’ll have to ask Abby. Which means telling her about _this_.” He waves an irritated hand at the living room.

“You’d have to tell her anyway,” Gibbs points out. “She’ll want to know why she’s running those prints.” He pauses. “Unless you want to take ‘em to Metro.”

“No!” Tony bursts out, horrified. “What’m I supposed to tell them? ‘Hi, my name’s Anthony DiNozzo, I’m a federal agent and I think I’m being _stalked,_ Officer, please help me!’” His voice rises as he speaks until the ‘please help me’ sounds almost like he really means it.

Gibbs doesn’t comment on the slightly hysterical tone that even Tony can hear in his voice, although he says, “You _think_ you’re being stalked, DiNozzo?” with a significant look at the picnic.

Tony huffs and subsides, looking away and falling back against the back of the couch. There’s a moment’s silence, in which Tony tries very hard not to think about everything he just spilled in that little attack of hysteria, and hopes to god that Gibbs won’t call him on it.

“That why you didn’t tell me?”

So much for that hope. Tony squirms unhappily, wishing there was a little more space between himself and Gibbs (which is not something he’s ever wished before). “I didn’t think it was serious,” he mumbles.

“Bullshit!” The word is so sharp Tony jumps. He chances a look sideways at Gibbs—yup, pissed as hell. Gibbs’ jaw is tight, his eyes intent and furious. “You remember the date on every day you got one of those damn things, DiNozzo!” He flicks a glance at the stuff Tony had dumped onto the couch. “Like hell you didn’t think it was serious.”

 Tony finds he doesn’t have it in himself to lie to Gibbs again. “I’ve been a cop sixteen _years_ , Gibbs. I—I thought I could handle it.” He can’t look up at Gibbs, because he knows—knew, even while he was lying to himself the last six weeks—that he was being an idiot and he should have told someone, and really the only thing holding him back from doing what he knew he should have done was stupid, stupid pride.

He already lands up in Gibbs’ basement to bitch and moan about his life too often—he couldn’t stomach forcing Gibbs to be a part of this mess too.

Besides, he told Gibbs the truth. He’s been a cop for sixteen years; he should have been able to handle it.

“And.. and they were just gifts. I thought… I mean, if I didn’t encourage it I thought they’d stop.”

The head slap is swift, full-force and… not entirely unmerited.

“Thanks, Boss,” he mutters, rubbing the back of his head.

Gibbs snorts again and doesn’t comment, which is enough to make Tony look up. Gibbs is wearing the closest thing he has to a pissy face and he’s studiously not looking at Tony.

Tony sighs, and inches over until he’s close enough to gently—and briefly—bump Gibbs’ knee with his.

Gibbs still looks mutinous for a while, but finally he waves his hand in a ‘yeah, yeah’ gesture. “All right, DiNozzo, get on with it.”

Tony nods, getting up and making for the kitchen to get a bag so he can collect the silverware.

He’s still rummaging in a drawer when he hears the unmistakable sound of the door being unlocked. He freezes for a second before stepping away from the drawer, drawing his gun and moving slowly toward the living room. He strains his ears, but there’s only the faint buzzing of that one light in the hallway outside. Then, slowly, he becomes aware of someone’s breathing, high and fast.

He’s almost at the living room when a male voice says, “Who are you? What are you doing in Tony’s apartment?”

He’d been expecting the question, but silly him, he’d expected _Gibbs_ to be the one asking it.

Gibbs replies, even, “I was gonna ask you the same thing,” just as Tony enters the living room, gun raised.

Well.

Whoever he was expecting, it wasn’t this—this tall, thin guy with dark hair, wide eyes, and holding two gift-wrapped packages done up in red and silver.

The guy looks at the kitchen door and jumps when he sees Tony. “Tony!” he exclaims, eyeing the gun in Tony’s hands nervously.

“That’s me,” Tony agrees. “Who the hell are you?”

The nervous look is replaced by an unamused one. “Very funny, Tony.” He blinks. “Could you, uh, could you put that gun down? Please?”

“Tell me who you are first,” Tony snaps, his gun never wavering.

“Tony, seriously, put that down. Is that—is that loaded?” He keeps looking at the gun in Tony’s hands before flinching away from it and visibly forcing his gaze back to Tony’s face. He’s either unused to firearms or a really good actor.

“Hey!” Gibbs snaps, and the guy whips around to face him. “He asked you a question. Who are you?”

The guy actually glares at him. “Tony, who’s this?” He seems entirely unaffected by Gibbs’ reciprocal glare.

“You heard him,” Tony says evenly. “Who. Are. You.”

“Seriously!” the guy exclaims. “It wasn’t funny the first time, Tony, okay? Cut it out.” He looks at the gun again. “And for god’s sake put the gun away, okay? I’m really not into the whole arrest-fantasy thing.”

Tony, about to snap out a sharp retort, stops cold, because there’s a ring of sincerity in his voice. Shit. He sounds—he sounds like he means that. Tony’s gut twists. What if—he’d been assuming all along that this was _deliberate_ , but what if—he takes a deep breath, pushes aside the anger and the helpless bewilderment of _someone breaking into his home_ and really looks at the guy’s face.

The guy’s still staring at Tony’s gun like it’s—well, like it’s a loaded weapon and he’s waiting for it to go away before he makes any sudden movements, like he really wants to take a few steps back away from it but won’t let himself. He’s still holding on to his red-and-silver packages.

“Listen,” Tony says finally. “I’m not fucking with you. I have no idea who you are.” He makes himself say it slowly, evenly.

The guy stops looking at the gun and raises his wide eyes to Tony’s face in obvious shock. “You—you don’t—you really—” he stops, cuts himself off with a deep, shaky breath, and then he sways where he stands, the stuff in his hands dropping to the floor.

Gibbs gets to him before Tony does, steadying him and then leading him over to the moved couch. The guy sits down, hard, still staring at Tony. “You don’t remember me,” he says, soft and bewildered, and just like that Tony does.

“New Year’s Eve. You were at the party,” he says slowly. “At the bar. You asked me for a… a breath mint.” He stops, searching his memory. He had got the guy’s name, he knew he had— “John?”

The guy is still staring at him, eyes still wide and scared and shocky. “Joel,” he says softly. “My name is Joel.” Then he frowns, and it’s a little terrifying the way his face changes. “You took everything,” he says slowly, “the book and the flowers and the—why’d you take them if you didn’t know—you _had_ to know! You _did_ know! You’re just—” and then he launches himself off the couch and, weirdly, at _Gibbs_ , and Tony’s moving without thinking about it, holstering his weapon, grabbing the guy’s—Joel’s—arms just as he lunges for Gibbs and hauling him back—not that Gibbs needs his protection, certainly not from this skinny guy who wouldn’t last five minutes against McGee. But still.

Gibbs doesn’t even flinch back from Joel’s flailing fists, and he just stands there while Joel snarls and squirms and struggles against Tony’s hold. “Tony, let me _go_!” Joel demands, yanking futilely. Tony stares at the side of his head. It’s not even that much of an effort, holding him back. Eventually Joel stops struggling, and turns to stare at Tony, breathing hard. “Tony,” he says, panting. “Who is he? What’s he doing in your apartment on Valentine’s Day?” He pauses. “On… Valentine’s…”

Then his face suddenly twists with fury. “He’s—you’re—you lying, cheating—” He lunges abruptly at Tony instead.

“Whoa, whoa!” Tony exclaims, grabbing his wrist and pushing him back, even as Gibbs moves in, pinning Joel’s arms behind his back as Joel twists against him, face contorted with ugly rage. Tony raises his weapon again at the look on his face.

“So, what, your big plan was to have someone over and if I caught you you would _pretend you don’t know me_? That’s how this is going to be?” Joel gives a short, harsh laugh, and stops fighting. He looks away, staring at the picnic spread out on the floor.  “You know, I thought we really had something, Tony.”

Tony’s jaw drops. “I barely know you!” he exclaims, incredulous. “I met you, once, more than a month ago, at a party where I must have spoken to twenty other people! So, no, we didn’t ‘really have something’. What we have is you breaking into my apartment.” He pauses, lowering the gun slightly now that Gibbs has a good grip on his arms, but not feeling ready to put it away. “How did you do that, anyway?”

Joel is still staring  at the picnic set-up. He licks his lips before saying, shakily, “Come on, Tony, I didn’t _break in_. I have a key.”

“You—what?” Tony gapes at him. “Where the hell did you _get_ this key?”

“It—I—it was on your end table. I thought it would be easier…” Joel trails off slowly.

“Okay,” Tony says with exaggerated patience, “what were you doing in here when you _found_ my spare key?”

Joel looks up, surprised. “The DVD! I wanted to see which ones you didn’t have, Tony! I didn’t want to give you something you already—I wanted to do something nice for you!” he bursts out desperately, eyes wide and earnest and… he broke into Tony’s apartment to _check out his DVD collection_.

Tony deflates. “Hey, hey. Okay. Here, sit down,” he says, forcing himself to be gentle, forcing away the impulse to get in Joel’s face, to march him out at gunpoint. Some instinct tells him that’s about the worst thing he can do now. His skin crawls as he does it, but he makes himself holster his weapon.

Gibbs gives him an incredulous stare from over Joel’s shoulder. “DiNozzo,” he starts impatiently, but Tony, for once, cuts him off. “Gibbs,” he says, evenly. Their gazes lock for a moment before Gibbs finally, with obvious reluctance, nods and lets go of Joel, easing him back down onto the couch.  Joel sinks down, slumping forward and burying his face in his hands, curling into an impossibly small ball for someone as tall as he is. He’s almost unrecognisable as the guy who lunged at Gibbs, who accused Tony of cheating.

Christ.

Okay.

“Okay, Joel,” Tony says gently. “Why don’t you tell me everything from the beginning.” He sits down on the couch next to Joel, making sure to keep a good two feet between them—there’s no sense in encouraging whatever crazy idea this guy has in his head by sitting too close.

Gibbs moves to stand unobtrusively on Joel’s other side, where he’s not in Joel’s line of sight but still close enough to hold him back if it’s necessary. Tony exchanges a long look with him before turning his attention back to Joel.

“Joel,” he prompts, still trying to keep his voice low and gentle.

Joel scrubs his hands over his face, takes a deep breath, and starts talking. Now Tony can remember him better—he’d been drooping over the bar, looking small and sad and lost, and Tony had just plain felt sorry for him. He’d gone over to the bar and struck up a conversation, and okay, damn it, he’d flirted just a little, trying to see if he could get a smile to replace the hangdog look he’d been wearing. It had even worked, hadn’t it? They’d talked for a good fifteen minutes, about—yes, about the Reflecting Pool, and Tony’s fond childhood memories of picnics on the living room floor. Jesus Christ.

Tony fights the urge to groan, and instead listens to Joel tell him that they’d connected so well that night, and Joel had liked him so much, and Tony had liked him too, hadn’t he? Tony’d said he had a nice smile, hadn’t he?

“I was just being nice, Joel,” Tony says quietly. Joel just stares back at him. Tony has a creepy feeling that Joel isn’t listening to a word he’s saying. He tries again. “You were just… you looked blue, and I wanted to cheer you up. That’s all.”

Joel turns his stare down towards his hands. “It was going to be so—so perfect,” he says softly. “I should never have left to get the tie.” Tony spares a glance for the stuff Joel had dropped when he’d come in. One of them does look like a tie, now that Tony thinks about it.

“Joel,” he says with a sigh. “I never meant for you to think that stuff. I just… I was just being nice. That’s all. If you took something else from that conversation, I—I’m really sorry.”

Joel doesn’t give any indication that he’s listening. He’s still sitting and staring at his hands, slumped on Tony’s couch, Tony’s couch that he moved to set up a picnic on Tony’s living room floor for a Valentine’s Day surprise. Tony runs a hand through his hair. What the hell is he supposed to do now?

He looks around for Gibbs, who’s been curiously silent throughout the conversation, but he’s not in the room. Tony doesn’t really have time to wonder where he is, though, before he’s coming in from the kitchen, carrying a glass of water, which he  hands to Joel. “Here,” he says. “Drink that.”

Joel accepts the glass without argument, but doesn’t drink, just sits there with it in his hands. Finally Tony prompts, “Joel? Do you have any family? Someone that can come pick you up?”

“Pick me up?” Joel repeats, finally looking up from his glass of water. “I’m leaving?” He bites his lip, then puts the glass on the floor and _takes Tony’s hand._ “But… it’s Valentine’s Day. Don’t you want to spend it with me?”

Tony stares. For several moments he actually can’t move, and then he finally shakes himself out of it and extricates his hand gently from Joel’s. “No, Joel. I think you need to go home.”

Joel scoots towards Tony on the couch. “No, look, Tony, we can—” He’s stopped by Gibbs’ hand on his shoulder.

“Think we’ve had enough of that,” Gibbs says. Joel stares uncomprehendingly at him, as if he’d forgotten Gibbs was in the room. Gibbs flicks a glance at Tony. “DiNozzo, go get rid of that glass if Joel doesn’t want it.” In other words, get out of the room and let me deal with this. It’s probably a good idea—Joel doesn’t seem to be registering anything Tony tells him anyway. Tony nods, picks up the still-full glass of water, and makes his escape.

In the kitchen, he leans against the counter, feeling dull and old and exhausted. He’d just been trying to cheer the guy up, for god’s sake. How had—what had he _said_? He screws his eyes shut. He can hear Gibbs talking in the living room, the low, gentle voice he saves for terrified victims and small children. Tony swallows, thinking of the flowers Joel had sent him that first time and how they’d momentarily made him smile despite the nightmarish case they’d been working.

He sighs, moves to the sink and washes his hands. He straightens the drawer he’d been rooting in earlier. He wipes down the counter-top.

He’s looking for something else to do when Gibbs comes in. “Hey,” he says, walking over to where Tony’s leaning against the counter and leaning next to him. For a while they just stand there, side by side.

Eventually Gibbs says, “Called his sister. She’s coming to get him.”

Tony nods.

“Said something when I called her. Sounds like this isn’t the first time it’s happened.”

Tony nods again.

“Wasn’t anything you said.”

Tony meets Gibbs’ eyes, startled, and then gives a rueful smile. Why, after all this time, does it still surprise him when Gibbs does that?

Gibbs returns the smile before putting a finger under his chin, not really tipping his face up but just holding it there. “You hear me, DiNozzo? Wasn’t you.”

Tony shrugs awkwardly, looking away in the general direction of his fridge. “Some of it was me, Boss. I mean, I was—I _was_ kind of flirting with him.”

Gibbs makes a non-committal noise. Tony hurries on, “I mean, I really didn’t mean anything.”

Gibbs shrugs. “Don’t owe me any explanations, Tony.”

“Yeah, I do.”

He swallows hard in the sudden silence of the kitchen. They haven’t said anything explicit, haven’t acknowledged it in anything more than long, wordless silences, since Christmas, when Tony said ‘what if I can now?’, half-afraid, half-defiant, and saw an answering gleam in Gibbs’ eyes.

He chances a look sideways at Gibbs now. Gibbs isn’t looking at him; he’s staring straight ahead, but.

Over the years Tony has come to be able to tell the difference between Gibbs being still and Gibbs holding himself still, and right now Gibbs isn’t so much as twitching but the air around him is practically vibrating with all the things he’s not doing.

Tony refuses to follow the thought, to wonder what those things might be, for the same reasons that Gibbs isn’t doing them.

It’s not the time.

_It’s never the fucking time._

Eventually Gibbs, still not looking at Tony, says, “I’ll stay with him. Start packing up the stuff.” He straightens up and walks out of the kitchen.

Tony waits until Gibbs has led Joel—a very different, very pale Joel, looking wide-eyed and shocky—into the kitchen and seated him at the table. Joel doesn’t look at him. Tony bites his lip, wondering if he should try to catch his eye, before deciding that it’s probably for the best and slipping quietly out of the kitchen.

He packs up all the picnic things in the basket; he stares for a long time at the clear fingerprint on the handle of a fork, remembering as if from a dream his savage pleasure when he’d found it.

He can’t get everything to fit in the basket, so he appropriates the bag he stuffs old takeout menus in. It’s still a tight fit. Tony puts everything at the door. Then he wrestles the couch and coffee table back to where they belong. It isn’t until he’s finished that he realises just how much it had unsettled him to see his living room looking like that.

He drops onto his couch and leans back, closing his eyes. God. It’s been a long week, and he’d _really_ been looking forward to a little downtime tonight. And to make matters worse he’s shot Gibbs’ evening to hell, too.

He’s suddenly hit with the memory of Gibbs’ face when he’d walked into Tony’s apartment, of the funny note in his voice on the phone and when Tony answered the door, the way he’d looked at Tony sharp and startled when he’d said, “This wasn’t you?”

Why had Gibbs thought it _was_ him? And if it was, why did Gibbs think he’d have called—

The doorbell rings.

*

Joel’s sister Susan Norling turns out to be a female version of him: tall, thin and serious-looking. She listens in silence to Tony’s account of everything that’s happened since January, and when he’s finished she pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs.

“I’m really sorry,” she says at last. "It’s… he’s—he’s had… issues before, there was an ex that he—but I never thought—” she bites her lip, looking like she’s going to cry, and Tony finds he can’t take that look on her face any more than he could stand it on her brother six weeks ago.

“Hey,” he says gently. “Now you know. It’ll be okay.” He rubs the back of his neck. “I mean, I’m no expert but…” he shrugs. “There’s help he can get, you know?”

She frowns. “You mean help like… drugs?”

“Therapy?” he suggests. “Like I said, no expert, but I’ve been a cop a long time. I’ve seen—” he pauses—“a lot of people turn their lives around when it doesn’t look like they can. People are stronger than you think.” He stares idly at their reflections in his TV, before turning back to her with a small smile. “And Joel is obviously a good guy. He sent me flowers, you know?”

She smiles tremulously. “Yeah,” she agrees quietly. She brushes her hair out of her face and takes a deep breath. It seems to steady her. “Where is he?”

Tony leads her into the kitchen; Gibbs takes her in with a look, and he and Tony blend discreetly into the background while Susan gathers her brother up and leads him out of the kitchen, speaking softly to him, her arm around his shoulders.

They trail after them into the living room, watching Susan pick up the picnic basket and sling it over an arm and heft the beer cooler with the same hand. So far Joel’s barely reacted to anything after Gibbs took him into the kitchen, but when she picks up the overflow bag full of the gifts he tries to stop her.

“No, Tony, They’re for you, I want you to—I want to give them to you.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Tony tells him. Joel flinches and looks at the floor, nodding. Tony knows he’s doing the right thing, but he still feels like a monster, knowing he’s put that look on another human being’s face.

Susan takes Joel’s hand and leads him out of the apartment.

Tony closes the door behind them and mechanically puts up the chain and slides the bolt home.

“Change your locks,” Gibbs says from behind him.

“Yeah,” Tony mumbles. He makes his way slowly back to the couch, shrugging off his suit jacket and getting rid of his holster and tie before collapsing onto it. He leans back and drops his head onto the backrest, feeling like he never wants to move again.

Gibbs sits down next to him. He doesn’t say anything, and Tony closes his eyes and lets the silence sink into his skin.

Gibbs is sitting just a bit closer than usual, and Tony twitches his leg so that their knees come just short of touching. Gibbs makes a small noise and leans back a little: Tony can feel the movement against the back of the couch.

They don’t talk for a long while, which is normal for Gibbs but not so much for Tony. Still, it feels… not good, exactly, because Tony can’t get Joel’s face out of his head, but… comfortable. Right. Tony notes in distant amusement that they’re breathing in sync, which usually only happens on stakeouts.

“Gibbs,” he says finally. It’s an effort not to call him ‘Boss’ but just this once he knows he needs to make it.

Gibbs does not, like most people, say ‘hmm’ or ‘yeah’ but he has this trick of making his silence sound expectant. He does it now.

“You… you thought I set up the picnic,” Tony says. He keeps his eyes closed, partly because he’s exhausted and partly because this is easier that way.

The quality of Gibbs’ silence changes: now it’s saying ‘well, yeah, DiNozzo, it’s _your_ apartment, what was I supposed to think?’.

Tony really needs to learn that trick. He saves that thought for later, because he needs all his attention for this.

Even though he’s pretty sure, it’s an effort to get the words out, to put himself on the line.

“For you,” he says, eyes still closed, heart pounding, sitting very, very still. “You thought it was… for you.” Then he waits, because Gibbs knows him, knows him well enough to know what it means that Tony brought it up.

So he sits there, with his eyes closed, listening, amazed, because Gibbs’ breathing has changed.

Tony did that. He made Gibbs’ breathing go shallow and fast like that.

He stays where he is, eyes closed, head back, feeling the way his own breathing quickens to match Gibbs’.

Finally Gibbs draws in a deep breath. “You must be some kind of detective,” he says, and it’s wry and sarky and a bit self-effacing and rueful and it’s so _Gibbs_ that Tony laughs, a helpless, relieved, breathy chuckle that he can feel shaking the couch under him. He lets his body move with it, lets himself flop sideways till he’s facing Gibbs, and then opens his eyes.

Oh.

There’s nothing in the world like the way Gibbs is looking at him, open and soft and warm, a smile lurking about the corners of his mouth and crinkling up his eyes and lightening his whole face—hell, the whole _room_.

 _Brighten my day with a smile_ , Tony thinks.

“I would never do anything like that,” Tony says at last, after they’ve stared at each other some more.

Gibbs raises his eyebrows. “No?”

“Never,” Tony grins. He watches, helplessly endeared, as Gibbs tries and fails to stop smiling.

“Didn’t think so,” Gibbs says. Tony has the impression he’s not paying a whole lot of attention to what he’s saying right now, which is kind of mind-blowing.

It’s also kind of mind-blowing the way Gibbs is shifting closer to him, leaning down in tiny increments like he can’t quite help himself.

Tony's doing it, too.

“I mean,” he says, “for one thing I’m pretty sure it would have to involve boats for you to like it.”

“Yeah?” Gibbs has leaned over enough that he needs to put a hand on the back of the couch for support.

“Yeah,” Tony says. “Or sawdust.”

Gibbs chuffs out a laugh. He’s close enough that Tony can feel it against his face. “Sawdust works,” he says.

Tony grins. “Yeah. For me too.”

Then he shuts the hell up, because Gibbs is _here_ , and Tony can feel Gibbs’ breath on his face and Gibbs’ hand comes up to curve around his jaw and his eyes drop shut against his will and _he’s kissing Gibbs._

Or Gibbs is kissing him; he’s not sure which and he doesn’t care. He makes a small high sound that sounds silly to him but Gibbs seems to like it so it’s all good, and he gets a hand up into Gibbs’ hair and he can smell sawdust and…

They eventually break apart with a soft, wet noise. Tony turns his face to regard Gibbs from closer quarters than he ever thought he’d get to.

Gibbs looks back, eyes roving over his face before meeting Tony’s gaze. He strokes a thumb over Tony’s cheekbone; Tony leans into the touch and Gibbs smiles.

“Hey,” he says, voice low and private. “You okay?”

Remembering is like a slap in the face. Tony swallows. “Yeah,” he mumbles.

“Mm-hmm.”

Tony sighs, and lets the hand in Gibbs’ hair drift down to the back of his neck, palming the warm skin. He has a weird moment of being horrified at his own audacity, despite the warmth of Gibbs’ hand on his face.

“It’s just—” he huffs. “It was nice, you know? The random gifts for no reason.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And I felt kind of. I mean, he’s going to need therapy, right?”

“Not your fault, DiNozzo.” The matter-of-fact tone shouldn’t go with the feeling of Gibbs carding gently through Tony’s hair.

“I know,” Tony says. “It’s just—” he shrugs.

“Yeah,” Gibbs eyes him quietly for a moment. “Random gifts, huh?”

Tony shrugs again.

Gibbs smiles suddenly. “Got a Snickers bar in my pocket,” he offers.

Tony can’t help it, he snorts with laughter. “Wow, Gibbs, a Snickers bar, that’s so romantic.”

“Thought so,” Gibbs agrees.

Tony, still laughing, finally gives into the impulse to pull Gibbs into a hug, because hey, he totally can now. Gibbs, far from protesting, hugs back fiercely: like he’s wanted to for a while; like he knows how much Tony needs that hug. Tony tucks his face into Gibbs’ shoulder, feeling good and warm and _safe_ , and thinks ruefully about the ruin of his Big Valentine’s Day Plan To Seduce Gibbs. On the other hand, it seems to have worked out okay anyway.

Plus, he can still use it next year.

_-fin-_

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not a professional; my experience of stalking is purely anecdotal. No offense was intended to anyone.


End file.
